ISP Guarantees Net Neutrality, For a Fee

greedyturtle writes "Ars Technica has up an interesting article on the first ISP to guarantee network neutrality. It's called COmmunityPOwered Internet, aka Copowi. The offer of neutrality comes at a higher price — mostly due to uncompetitive telco line pricing schemes — $34 for 256K DSL, $50 for 1.5 Mbs, and $60 for 7 Mbps. The owner claims to need only 5,000 subscribers to move his ISP into the national arena from the 12 Western states where it now operates. Would you be willing to spend the extra bucks for network neutrality?"

Comments

Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

It ain't gonna work.

They don't own any fiber. The access that they can deliver is at the mercy of the telcos who provision their lines. And while they claim that presently they have cushy arrangements which allow them to do whatever the fuck they want with the bandwidth as long as they pay for it... Who guarantees that agreement will remain in place? The first time a Copowi user turns into a warez pup, what's to say the local DSLAMs won't just "dry up?"

Cute idea. I wish it could work. Ain't gonna survive in our current sad state of Intellectual-Property-uber-alles, especially when one single entity owns the last mile in just about every jurisdiction of this country. Sure, I'd like to start up my own "I don't give a fuck" ISP, too. If only I owned a fiber run to everybody's house, it would be a piece of cake.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

I know good and well what "net neutrality" means. How do you offer such, as an ISP, when you don't own any infrastructure and you have to piggyback on the big boys? If you're offering DSL over lines that really belong to Verizon or SBC, how can you promise your customers that all connections are equal?

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[Billly Gates]

My guess is they pay the ISP more money so the traffic isn't throttled back. The telecom industry has been doing this illegally for years. Remember in the 1990s when there were hundreds of ISPs to chose from? Now how many are left?

I wonder what would happen if the public works water and sewer companies tried to do this? Maybe have 2 year contracts and charge by flush and you must pay a surcharge if you move for money they would lose? Pay it or shit in your backyard in an outhouse?

I view the telecom industry as no different here since the lines are tax payer owned and paid for.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

OK, here's the point I'm trying to make.

Consider that there's company V. Company V owns the phone lines. They sell DSL connections to their subscribers, giddy little consumers who are happy to pay whatever company V would like to charge.

Along comes company C. Company C claims "we won't mess with your connection! You will get Google, and YouTube, and MySpace, and Fox News, and everything at the same speed. We will never throttle anything or attempt to meter it based on content! We are all about net neutrality!" And subscribers flock to company C, as they would tend to do in a free market.

However, company C has to buy their connectivity from company V. And company V never made any agreement with company C's subscribers about how their traffic might be throttled. Suddenly, company C is trying their best to provide "all connections are equal" access to their subscribers, but company V keeps interfering. Company C's subscribers who try to load videos from YouTube find it difficult, though they can load videos from Fox News in real-time. And who's to blame? Does company C suck, or is company V holding a brother down?

I wouldn't want to be company C when this shitstorm erupts. I wish Copowi the best of luck, and I hope they get EFF on their side, but I predict they're going to sink like a lead tuna.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[QuantumG]

Yup, and what *I* said was that they could shape everyone the same. That is, if YouTube gets shit bandwidth then Fox News gets shit bandwidth. Neutral doesn't have to mean good.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[gujo-odori]

The thing is, net neutrality is not really about the last mile. I used to be a sysadmin at an ISP, and utilization of last mile bandwidth was never the issue. Whoever they are leasing the local loops from doesn't care per so about whether my DSL line is saturated all the time or not. Net neutrality is about load on the backbone carriers' networks, and below that, on downstream ISP networks. It can also be just about extra profits. A couple cases to illustrate each:

1) Simple load. There's an overselling of bandwidth formula by which all ISPs make money. If the aggregate bandwidth of all your customers is X, you don't have to have X amount of backbone bandwidth, because they aren't all online at once, or all fully utilizing their links when they are. You only need some fraction of that amount. You've got this all worked out, but then along comes Youtube, IM with voice, Vonage and other VoIP carriers, Bit Torrent, online music and video stores, etc., and in pretty short order, your average user is consuming far more bandwidth than they used to and your oversell ratio just went out the window. To maintain level of service, you can do a couple of things: the first is to throw a bunch of money at the problem, upgrading your bandwidth, your core and edge routers, the whole nine yards. The trouble is, this is expensive, and while the routers are a sunk cost, bandwidth is a running cost. Profit margins are very thin for ISPs, generally, so to remain profitable you would have to raise prices. But Internet access is very price sensitive, and the first one to raise prices is going to see customers walking, in large numbers. The other option is traffic-shaping. You prioritize some traffic over others, and put the bandwidth-hogging stuff like Youtube, BT, online music and vidoe stores, etc, at the end of the bandwidth line. Unless, of course, Google, the stores, etc., are willing to pay you money. Now you have a way to finance that infrastructure without raising rates. Net neutrality is dead, but you're still alive. And Bit Torrent? Oh well, nobody's paying there, so BT is just going to have crappy performance on your network.

2) Greed. I'm a big ISP. I want to get into the VoIP business for myself, so I do. My service is super, and it's cheaper than the phone company. My customers like this. Trouble is, there are VoIP companies out there competing with me, like Vonage and Packet 8. Their service isn't as good as mine (I used to use Packet 8, now use Vonage, and in between had a cable company's VoIP service, so I'm talking from experience here; but Vonage is pretty good), but it's almost as good and it's over 1/3 cheaper. A lot of customers like that even better. What to do? Ah, I know! Traffic shaping! Packets for my own VoIP service get routed at a higher priority than other VoIP services. No their service is no longer almost as good as mine. My customers may or may not really like this, if they even pin it on me, but now my service is worth the premium I charge for it b/c I made the others look bad. Net neutrality is dead, and I can no longer claim with a straight face to be a common carrier like a telco, but I'm making more money and can use it to finance the greater bandwidth demands from case 1, above (along with the fees I'm socking the content providers with to not be traffic-shaped on my network).

This, then, is the problem facing Copowi: They may practice complete net neutrality within their network, consisting of their edge, their core, and the local loops they are leasing. However, if their upstream (be it a major backbone carrier or just a larger ISP who in turn connects to a backbone provider) doesn't practice net neutrality, it doesn't really matter much that Copowi does, except on traffic local to their network, which isn't a whole lot.

Of course, if their upstream starts traffic shaping on VoIP, P2P, whatever, and Copowi wants neutrality, they do have an option: pay to have no shaping on traffic going in or out of their network. And lo and behold, this appears to be exactly what's going on

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

OK, then; who's going to sign up for internet access with company C, knowing that they cater to the lowest common denominator and give everyone shit bandwidth? That sounds more like company V, who already exists and is generally the only option for many people.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[lucas teh geek]

see that would never fly, but not because it's entirely different (it's not, i agree with you on that), but because the luddites in power understand that water is an essential service. they understand that they need water to have a shower in the morning, and they need water to flush their toilet. but the internet... in their minds nobody NEEDS the internet, after all isnt it all just porn and email? why is that important? (their thinking, not mine)

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[bakana]

No I would not be willing to spend the extra money for net neutrality. Anymore no brainer questions you'd like to ask?

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[NickFortune]

By negotiating contracts to that effect with Verizon or SBC? If they break the contract, they can then be sued for damages.

So the way to preserve net neutrality is for our ISPs to pay the big carriers not to downgrade our packets? And this is a good thing because otherwise they might demand payment from our ISPs in order for them not to downgrade our packets?

Makes you wonder why no one thought of this before, really.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[spottedkangaroo]

lines are tax payer owned and paid for.

Perhaps in some places, but certainly not at the telco where I work. All the lines were installed by the construction workers employed the telco where I work. The taxes account for over half the phone bill, but we don't get get anything out of it.

I doubt many of the lines are actually owned by tax payers. I'm sure that's the case in some places, but I would guess most of it is privately owned and privately paid for.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't paying more for the full, neutral internet the very definition of a tiered internet... which is the exact opposite of network neutrality?

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[rmadmin]

Go to a city council meeting and encourage them to build a municipal telecom. I work for a muni telecom. Telephone, CableTV (Digital/HD too), and Internet (dial-up, cable, rural wireless). Even though we don't have the lowest prices, and the highest speeds, we still have 80% market share. You don't have to put up with a monopoly. ;)

I would, but...

[Yetihehe]

I would. My family wouldn't. And it will be so with most of those "dark masses" we keep hearing about.

But wait a minute

[Billly Gates]

I was promissed by the telecom industry that this would never happen. They told us we would have cheaper rates with more bandwith. Its not like they lied to us just so they could rip us off on tax payer subsidized lines.

ah

[Anonymous Coward]

[mob voice] That's a nice internet you have there... would be a shame if anything happened to it... say me and my pals here will make sure no "accidents" happen... for a fee- what do ya say? [/mob voice]

Um....

[Spy der Mann]

isn't requiring a fee PRECISELY what Net Neutrality is against?

Re:Um....

[cyberjock1980]

You know what I would pay a fee for? My internet connection to actually be what I paid for! I never get the 'theoretical' maximum. In fact sometimes my webpages barely load. The fee I pay to get the 'supreme speed' should guarantee me that speed. Isn't that why I pay the extra $15 a month for the upgraded internet??

Re:Um....

[dodobh]

No. Network neutrality basically says "You paid for this bandwidth, use it as you like". Non-network-neutrality says "You paid for the bandwidth, but you can use it only for services we offer (or for connections to our partenrs. For anything else, here's a small fraction of your bandwidth".

What the non-neutral offer does is basically say "We can give you unlimited traffic, but only at $SLOW speed and for broadband speeds, you only get partner access". Essentially, instead of raising prices, they are making additional plans and pushing everyone down the ladder.

Re:Um....

[Liinux]

Why not just demand fiber to the home for $30/month. That would be nice and isn't totally impossible. The big national Telco over here offers fiber to the home for the equivalent of $25 for a 0.25/0.25 line. A 10/10 line is $40 though and a 100/10 is $45.

That doesn't inlude the cost to get the fiber actually installed, mind you, but when it is installed by someone it stays there and you can get these subscriptions.

The local monopolies still own the layer 1

[lanner]

I'm sold on paying a little more for an ethical network operator, but they really can't deliver on their promise. This is because they don't own the hardware transport. And, ultimately, if the monopolies (both cable and telco) want to twiddle with my bits, they can do so all the way down to layer 1.

Right now I have Qwest DSL in very-downtown Phoenix Arizona. I'm literally two blocks from the local baseball park. The only ISP options that I have are Qwest with an 7Mbps down/800Kbps up ADSL line or Cox with a 10Mbps down/1Mbps up DOCSIS cable line. That's the best that America can do in a major metro area, which is pretty crappy. I'm more unhappy with the upload than download. Covad just *might* have a DSLAM somewhere nearby, but they would still have to lease Qwest's copper 24 gauge pairs.

You see, nobody else can own the lines that come to my home, and neither Qwest nor Cox are going to turn over their copper line that they buried for anything short of a court order. Other possible means of a communication media might be wireless radio, power lines, or (in the very-imaginative but more-possible-than-you-might-think spectrum), flushing a fiber optic line all the way down to the sewer system where it could be aggregated to some central point.

ATM is a real technology that has the possibilities of taking that layer two connection and making it portable, rendering the layer 1 less relevant, but ATM is a train wreck of a technology. It works for some of Asia, where it is popular, but it's a really horrible standard. Unfortunately, ATM has really gone to hell in the USA. This is mostly due to the fault of the equipment manufactures who could not deliver reasonably priced hardware and software, the ATM specifications horrible requirements (cell overhead, the need for hardware switching, and the horrific unnecessarily-complicated standards), and the resulting bad taste left with network admins/engineers like myself who just don't think of it as viable any longer.

In summary, I'm still screwed. I can't use BitTorrent for legit or illegal usage without having my rate limited and I can't serve up a decent website because of a crappy upload speed.

Sure, and here's your free lunch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but we all pay for Internet access. Some pay more, some pay less, but we all pay.

If we didn't, there would be no Internet. It's simple math -- even my little home network doesn't run unless I plug the switch in, thus using electricity and adding to my electric bill.

We aren't even against paying more. I mean, nobody wants to -- classic NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) reflex -- but realistically, someone has to pay, and ultimately, we're better off if it's us.

What we are against is all the bullshit that people can do in a non-neutral network. It does revolve around money, but it has much more serious implications than a heftier Internet bill. It actually seriously threatens freedom of speech.

There is a much longer discussion to be had here, but I'd rather not do it as AC, and I don't trust this (borrowed) computer any more than I have to.

Depends on who's paying

[Asmor]

The opponents of net neutrality are all about getting the content providers to pay, not the subscribers. Basically, Verizon et. al. are getting paid by the customer to provide a service: bandwidth. However, greedy bitch it is, Verizon wants to get paid by Google and other content providers for allowing them to provide content to their customers. See the issue here?

To put it another way, let's say that I open an account with FedEx so that anyone can send me packages, and the shipping price will be billed to my account. However, FedEx sees me getting lots of packages from the Swiss Colony, and even though I'm already paying for the shipping, FedEx doesn't think its fair for the Swiss Colony to send me so much stuff without them getting yet another cut, so they threaten Swiss Colony to delay my delicious, delicious beef logs a couple weeks, "to ease congestion."

Re:Sort of competitive

[the_arrow]

The prices in USA really scares me.
I am paying around $30 for 10Mbps, guaranteed, both directions. For around $50 I can get 100Mbps.

What's net neutrality?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should stop using the term specifically and dubiously introduced by greedy and 'entitled' driven telecoms monopolists in the US to confuse the issue.

It's for telecom companies to come up with plans that attract paying consumers in a free market, not legislate about net neutrality and other spurious and self created issues to protect their effective monopolies in a broken US system.

Sure there is a cost of business and infrastructure but isn't that why I am paying my telecom provider to connect me online to Google and why Google is paying to have me connect to their website. Nobody is out to get a free lunch here, we are all paying customers and we pay a significant amount for our monthly plans.

If that's not enough for ISPs to make a profit they have to increase rates and justify that to their consumers in the free market, without a cartel or monopolists, where competitors can see an opportunity if consumers are being overcharged and step in to deliver more value for money. Of course this presumes regulation and free market is working which it clearly isn't in the US.

Just like the US financial industry has been overly creative with 'risk' and 'debt' so is the telecom industry with net neutrality and this is not good for consumers and the US as bastion of free markets should step in and punish monopolists out for a free ride or cease to call itself as such. This is not credible, nobody else is talking about this apart from the US, are ISP's outside the US not making money? Do you really think for all these years since the internet we have a bunch of bumbling and charity driven ISP's out to deliver unprofitable services without a business plan? But now thanks to US greed more of them are going to start talking about this, and thats bad for everybody.

That's not net neutrality

[danaris]

It's worse than that, ShaunC.

See, even if company V (rolling their eyes and sighing in exasperation) decides to be nice and let company C keep its promises, company A over there, though whose pipes 75% of the traffic from companies V & C must flow, is still trying to make a few extra (million) bucks screwing everybody else in the world, and they're throttling YouTube, but prioritizing MySpace because they paid up.

Dan Aris

Presumably they signed a contract....

[Joce640k]

Presumably they signed a contract which mentions that sort of thing.

Wait for the boogeyman

[mattr]

Having started an ISP with famous investors too dumb to put their money where their mouth is I can tell you why I worry about these guys. Certainly, if you are on Comcast and can move to them, go for it. The problem is, you know that $200 Billion people are talking about? The 200 gigabucks that went up in smoke? Look this isn't Cheech and Chong. Money doesn't fly away. What if the big boys actually did invest in fiber and equipment, but they just don't want to roll it out unless they are dragged out and screaming? That's a lot of money. The big boys are waiting to see how far they can push it, and when something starts to look interesting, if they can they will smash it. Welcome to the ISP business.

Now if these guys are going to try and tie in last mile people with great service and maybe value added (how about 2 free locally served movies a month, etc.) then they might have a future. Or if they could spam access to people wirelessly with some amazingly cheap technology, maybe. Maybe they could also have a chance if they are spinning off the hardware to someone else and they just have to sell "virtual" service. And maybe if they build a nationwide grassroots league (a federated little league if you will) peering with similar companies, they could even offer higher speeds and lower latency possibly. Or maybe if they could get some nice deals with municipalities or academia. Well maybe. I'd go with them if I was unhappy with my U.S. provider, though I'm not in the U.S. now, but long term? Their website says how it will be good for the long term. Personally, I've seen costs drop every 3 months, if it makes sense in the short term and you are getting really hassled with your ISP fine. But I think the only way to get good service is to legislate it. There are too many maybes, and too many big boys with big bank accounts who are just playing a cynical game until you show up on their radar.

Not Neutrality

[njfuzzy]

This is not Net Neutrality. This is what Net Neutrality is trying to avoid-- A tiered Internet, where the people who pay more get unfettered access.

Um... Peering?

[camperdave]

One problem with your analysis: You are not taking peering into account. The tier one providers, like sprint, verizon, British Telecom, etc, are networked together in a mesh. Same thing for the tier two providers. Any ISP worth its salt has connections to multiple peers and upstream providers. If someone in the mesh starts throttling traffic, the excess will just take another route.

Re:Um... Peering?

[TooMuchToDo]

That's a big no-no, because of these things called peering agreements. You have to meet fairly strict ratios to have an ongoing peering relationship (traffic being passed between two networks should normally be fairly equal in both directions). You just can't dump however much traffic you want on any one of your peers.

For the skinny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering

Paying either way it seems

[Jtheletter]

So let me get this straight, if we go with a major telco who throttles bandwidth to non-extorted - er, I mean non-partnered - sites then we have to pay them extra to really use all of our bandwidth. OR we can go with a company such as this one and... pay extra to use all of our bandwidth.

This really hasn't gotten us very far. I'm glad that a company is doing this, it's much needed, and actually gives us a chance to vote with our wallets. But until someone who controls the lines offers a similar competitive plan I think we're going to be stuck with a lot of '6 of one, half dozen of the other' choices.

Re:Well, but if they offered more . . .

[dwye]

> Like anonymity, no record retention, agreement not to tap
> or packet inspect ever?

Illegal. If you want them to be able to do this, lobby Congress. I am sure that organized crime will give you support for your position (which is another reason why it will never happen, btw :-). Until then, accept that any time someone in the business wants to look at your stuff, they can, whether it is because of a court order, being cooperative with law enforcement agencies, or a sysadmin wanting to monitor your unencrypted traffic to feed his delusions of godhood. They might be punished afterwards, but there is the problem of the bell that cannot be unrung.

If you want to be secure from any monitoring, there are ways, but you probably want to live a more normal life.

That's private choice, not net neutrality

[MSTCrow5429]

That's not net neutrality. That's a private business with private property deciding how to allocate its bandwidth, just like anyone else. It's not the government taking private property by eminent domain, and forcing the private businesses to allocate bandwidth based on an "equal" basis, which is what net neutrality would do.